Navigating the Filesystem | LLM CLI Training

The big picture

Your computer organizes everything into files and folders (also called directories). It’s a tree structure — folders contain files and other folders, all the way up to one root folder.

When you use your computer normally, you click through folders in Finder (Mac), File Explorer (Windows), or Files (Linux). In the terminal, you navigate the same tree — just by typing instead of clicking.

You only need three commands:

Command	What it does	Memory trick
`pwd`	Shows where you are	Print Working Directory
`ls`	Shows what’s here	List
`cd`	Moves you somewhere	Change Directory

That’s it. Three commands to go anywhere.

Try it yourself

Here’s a simulated terminal. It behaves just like a real one — try the commands below.

Terminal — Practice Mode

Type a command and press Enter. Try: pwd, ls, cd projects, help

/home/user $

Step 1: Where am I?

Type pwd and press Enter.

You’ll see something like /home/user — that’s your current location (your “home” directory).

TRY ITPrint your current working directory

Step 2: What’s here?

Type ls and press Enter.

You’ll see a list of files and folders in your current directory. Folders usually appear in a different color (blue in many terminals).

TRY ITList the contents of your current directory

Step 3: Go somewhere

Type cd projects to move into the projects folder, then ls to see what’s inside.

TRY ITNavigate into the 'projects' directory

Step 4: Go back

Type cd .. to go back up one level. The .. means “the folder above this one.”

TRY ITGo back up to the parent directory

The filesystem is like a building

Think of your computer’s filesystem like a building:

/ (root) is the ground floor — everything is inside it
/home is the residential floor
/home/user is your apartment
/home/user/projects is a room in your apartment
/home/user/projects/my-app is a drawer in that room

pwd tells you which room you’re standing in. ls shows you what’s in the room. cd lets you walk to another room.

Paths: absolute vs relative

There are two ways to describe a location:

Absolute path — the full address from root:

cd /home/user/projects/my-app

Relative path — from where you currently are:

cd projects/my-app

If you’re already in /home/user, both commands take you to the same place. Relative paths are shorter, so people use them more often.

Special path shortcuts

Symbol	Means	Example
`~`	Your home directory	`cd ~` goes home
`.`	Current directory	`cd .` goes nowhere
`..`	Parent directory	`cd ..` goes up one level
`/`	Root (top of everything)	`cd /` goes to root

💡Tab completion saves typing

Start typing a folder name and press Tab — the terminal will auto-complete it. If there are multiple matches, press Tab twice to see all options. This alone will save you hours of typing.

Putting it together

Here’s a typical navigation session:

pwd                         # Where am I?
ls                          # What's here?
# documents  projects  downloads

cd projects                 # Go into projects
ls                          # What projects do I have?
# my-app  portfolio  notes

cd my-app                   # Go into my-app
ls                          # What files are here?
# index.html  style.css  README.md

cd ../..                    # Go up two levels (back to /home/user)
pwd                         # Verify
# /home/user

What’s next

You can now navigate anywhere on your computer through the terminal. In the next lesson, you’ll learn the essential commands for creating, moving, and deleting files — the building blocks for everything else.